| Driving Revenue with Open Mobile Platforms |
| Written by Andy Bush, Director of Business Development, LiMo Foundation |
| Friday, 11 September 2009 14:58 |
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Never has the time been better in terms of opportunities for mobile applications developers. Up until recently, the 3rd party mobile developer market place had been a tough place to be, but the light is now at the end of the tunnel. The main issues encountered by developers are all too familiar:-
So let’s see what has changed to make life better for us all.
Multiple platforms (which one(s) to develop for)) There has finally been significant consolidation within the Open Mobile Platform space, so realistic targetable platforms narrowed down to:- · Windows Mobile - currently suffering from a rapidly shrinking market share, especially with their preferred manufacturer HTC recently appearing to favour Android (e.g. Touch HD2) · Symbian - recently moved to Foundation status and are currently attempting to open source their code base (which has significant licence implications). However, they still has some way to go, and Nokia’s recent launch of the N900 with Maemo rather that Symbian must certainly raise some questions · Maemo - yet to prove itself and with limited industry backing, but being Linux based, there is potential for cross platform opportunities. · LiMo - significant market support, and open Governance; but limited brand support and developer engagement. · Android - absence of a governance model and there is high potential for fragmentation, but evidence of good industry support.
As you can see, the landscape is now much simpler. Fragmentation within platforms (even when you have chosen your target platform(s), how many versions do you need to support? A little while ago, I was told by a relatively small Mobile Java Games Developer, that they had at least 25000 SKU’s to support, a nightmare for development, let alone scaling. I hear a similar story for other platforms, with multiple dependencies on slight variations on implementation. Good Platform compliance programs can help to alleviate this, but I think well defined and implemented development environments and runtimes are equally as important. Industry initiatives such as BONDI bode well for cross platform development, as well as support for de facto runtimes such as Flash and a move toward browser based applications and widgets. Moreover, control of the platform specification and implementation should provide consistency for native application development, as long as good compliance programs are defined and adhered to. Handset capabilities Moore’s Law have pushed BOM cost low enough to make significant device capabilities available to the majority of consumers, i.e. a large market place. Widespread availability of high speed broadband networks, GPS, accelerometers, haptics, touch input and large high resolution screens, now allow high quality, innovative and compelling application development. This means that the lowest common denomination is no longer that low and applications do not need to be “dumbed down”. Application discovery, distribution, installation, and payment This year, the main theme of MWC 2009 was “Applications Stores”; one was hardly able to move without bumping into yet another announcement of an upcoming app store or marketplace (although actual availability was somewhat thin on the ground)! Apple must of course, take the honours for pioneering this area, pulling together all of the elements that are required to make the discovery, distribution, installation, and payment of mobile applications as seamless (and painless) as possible, although having total control over a Platform does help more than a little! In the past, portals (whether browser based or on device (ODP)), never quite lived up to the promise, mainly due to the issues outlined in the paragraphs above with regard to fragmentation, but now the time is right, and we will see the rise of more capable “app stores” making it so much easier to monetise mobile applications development. The monetization potential of app stores providing a great user experience and relevant content has already been proven. Apple is seeing an average of $85 being spent on mobile applications for each iPhone, with an average of 65 applications installed on each. Get the pricing right, and the market is there! So in summary, never has the time been better for mobile application development, with a ready market of hungry consumers willing to spend, being equipped with very capable devices based on some truly open platforms providing a wide range of development environments and multiple routes to market.
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